by Heidi Peaster

Created on: February 02, 2010

Foster care, in its purest form, is a temporary placement of a child with an approved and/or licensed caregiver when the child's homelife is disrupted.  Within that simple statement is a labyrinth of conditions that affect the reality.

Foster care is a good thing.  That needs to be stated first and foremost.  The alternative is the way things used to be in this country, and the way things still are in many other countries around the world.  Foster care takes the place of the old orphanages of years past, placing the child needing care instead into a home environment where he can heal, grow, be loved, go to school and see a model of what home life is supposed to be.  That is the goal and the hope.  That, as we all know, is not always the reality.

Foster homes are licensed by the state where they are located.  The house itself must pass health department standards, and the foster parents (or parent) go through a complex licensing procedure that includes home studies, interviews of parent(s) and biological children, written bibliographies, criminal background checks,references, and training sessions.  Every one of the hoops through which foster homes are required to jump is worth it.  And even so, and even with all caseworkers can do, still bad foster homes and dangerous foster homes exist.

It needs to be understood that there are several things that foster care is not.

 It is not permanent.  Yes, there are adoptions that come out of foster care, more so and more easily than in the past, but that is not the norm.  Foster parents are in place to parent a child who has had the trauma of being moved from his/her home, for a huge spectrum of reasons.  Foster parents take the child into their home and into their family with the purpose to give the child the stability, love and chance to recover from this trauma while the court system figures out if or when he/she can go back to his/her former home.  This may take time.

  No one wants a child to be separated from his/her parents and home and siblings unnecessarily, but we don't dare send them back too quickly.  It is a fine, dangerous line to walk.  The child may be sent home after one night in the foster home, or sent to another relative's home, or the child may be in the foster care system for years.  Foster parents have to be first and foremost aware that, no matter how long the child stays in the

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